One more replacement official story: Lechler given wrong ball in Miami

Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said the replacement officials mistakenly gave him a slicker K-ball to try and throw with on the 2-point conversion try Monday night.

Well, yesterday on 95.7 FM, Raiders punter Shane Lechler said a replacement official gave him a quarterback’s ball instead of a kicker’s ball during the Miami game on Sept. 16.

“My first punt down in Miami, if you were watching the game, of course I saw it because on the first punt of the game, the (ref) refused to put the kicking ball in the game,” Lechler said. “Then you go and kick a quarterback ball, with me being the punter, you only touch the ball for about a second. There’s no way to know. I tried to hit the ball and all throughout the pre-game I hit that ball to the 10, 8-yard line and I hit that quarterback ball and you know they are not nearly as good as the kicker’s ball. The ball went to the 25-yard line and I went down there and got the ball.

“I explained to the refs, ‘Can you guys just at least show enough respect to get the kicking ball in?’ The guy looked dead at me and goes, ‘Dude … does it really matter?’ I had a lot of choice words for him after that. …

“That’s like trying to kick a spiral with a pencil. It’s impossible.”

Lechler went on to say that he still doesn’t know a lot of players on the Raiders roster — “It’s crazy the turnover we’ve had this year,” he said.

One teammate that Lechler is very familiar with is kicker Sebastian Janikowski, and there is decent chance that the NFL record of 63 yards that Seabass shares with three others falls in the thin air in Denver on Sunday.

Lechler said that early in his career Janikowski once made a 71-yard field goal pre-game in Denver, and that he would stretch out Janikowski to 69 yards on Sunday.